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Designed in Iran

Nothing has captured my attention as much lately as the graphic design coming out of Iran. While I’ve been familiar with the incredible work of more established designers like Reza Abedini, recently I’ve been mesmerized by the generation of designers who were born around the time of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 — those who grew up at a time when Iranians were grappling with an Islamic society. You can see this most notably in the work of Homa Delvaray, Iman Raad and Farhad Fozouni, who combine disparate cultural influences as well as technology and traditional applied arts. They utilize Farsi script as imagery, rather than simply as type.

Iran also has its own relatively young graphic-design magazine, Neshan, published in Farsi and English. Neshan serves as a valuable resource for the community, with an eye to an international audience. As Neshan’s founding editors note, the magazine started as “an effort to record the history of graphic design in Iran, which had not yet been written.”

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Correction: September 11, 2012An earlier version of this post erroneously credited three graphic designers with editing Neshan magazine. Reza Abedini, Iman Raad and Farhad Fozouni were not involved in editing the magazine.

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age.Read more…